Cicero said, "True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and ever lasting", and he was absolutely correct. Human being have made it unrecognizable. Cicero made it clear that laws that contradict natural justice are not laws at all, and that's all we need to know about the rule of law.

And what does that all mean in modern terms?

Courts are built on the promise of impartiality. Every rule of evidence, every safeguard of procedure, is meant to ensure that truth, not persuasion, prevails. Yet beneath this architecture lies a silent adversary: the human tendency to see what we expect to see. Confirmation bias-the instinct to favour information that supports our existing beliefs-remains one of the most pervasive and least examined threats to fair adjudication.

Once a theory of a case takes shape, even the most experienced lawyer or judge can begin to interpret every fact through its lens. A document that fits the narrative feels decisive; a contradiction becomes an exception. The adversarial system, for all its strengths, reinforces the habit. Two sides are trained to argue, not to falsify their own assumptions. Expert witnesses, enlisted by opposing parties, often frame their analyses as contests of intellect rather than joint inquiries into truth. In that sense the system rewards cleverness over clarity-what might be called anti-intellectual reasoning directed toward victory instead of understanding.

Recognizing this weakness requires humility. The challenge is simply not to apply the law correctly but to apply it without mental distortion. Doing so demands more than ethical intention; it demands education. Legal training still prizes rhetoric and precedent over cognitive self-scrutiny. Judges and advocates alike need structured instruction in how biases operate, how they wrap interpretation, and how deliberate reasoning can counteract them.

Judicial institutes and law schools could draw on findings from psychology and behavioural science to make this awareness part of professional discipline rather than personal virtue.

Justice depends on more than sound statutes. It depends on the intellectual honesty of those who apply them. The task before modern courts is to treat cognitive bias as seriously as legal error, for both lead to injustice. To reject confirmation bias is to affirm the rule of law itself: the rule that evidence, not expectation, must govern what we believe.

In other words, all you ever have to do to be on the right side of the law is to oppose ignorance. Everything else is irrelevant window-dressing.

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